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“He hit his head.”
Oh. That could be serious. But dead?
“Les?” Kip’s grip on her arms tightened. He drew her closer. She didn’t want him to hold her, but rested her head on his chest for just a second anyway. So she could think. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
He was sorry for her. She couldn’t have that. Leslie nodded, gripping the front of his shirt with both hands. “I’m sorry you had to do this.” She found a way to speak. “He was your best friend. I know you’ve got to be in shock….”
His only reply was a single movement of the chin that rested on top of her head. And the brief sob that shook the body so close to hers. Leslie tried to stand outside herself and watch. As she searched frantically for the still, calm place that brought her peace, she felt a sympathy sob coming on. Just one. For Kip.
After that, she didn’t remember much.
“DEARLY BELOVED, we are gathered here this Thanksgiving Day to mourn the passing, celebrate the life of, and be thankful for having known Calhoun Olmstead Sanderson, a young man who…”
Dressed all in black, suit, shirt, tie, shoes, Kip stood between the two Sanderson women in a small corner of the barren and brown cemetery in Westerville, Ohio, warding off the chill. That gray November day God had been considerate enough to postpone the cold spell that would consume the state of Ohio for most of the next several months. It was a balmy forty-eight degrees. It could have been below freezing for all Kip noticed.
“…At the age of twelve young Calhoun lost his lawyer father in a drive-by shooting and from that point on took up the reins of man of the house, often voluntarily forgoing his own teenaged pleasures to serve the needs of his small family—mostly, at that time, babysitting his nine-year-old sister, Leslie…”
The jolt next to him was his cue. Kip slid an arm around the slender body of his best friend’s little sister. She’d broken down the night before at the viewing, and at the funeral home a couple of days before that, and when she’d walked by the room in her mother’s house that had been her brother’s when they’d all lived there together.
Cal had practically raised Leslie. She’d idolized him. Kip had expected her to take his death hard…
“…A scholar, a gifted football quarterback who gave up his shot at the NFL to follow in his father’s footsteps in the legal profession so he could be close at hand in the event that either his mother or sister needed him…”
Leslie slumped and Kip held her against him. She was crying quietly again, not making a sound as the tears poured down her cheeks. He swallowed, his throat thick.
Kip Webster had felt a lot of things for a lot of different women in his thirty-three years. He loved everything about women—their emotions, the combination of intelligence and intuition, the softness. His idea of heaven was being the only man among a universe of happy women. Not many men could handle such a feat—keeping that many of them happy. He was pretty confident he could.
Or he had been. Until four days ago, when Calhoun Sanderson’s little sister fell apart in his arms behind the very impressive desk of her very impressive office in the swankiest building in downtown Phoenix. He would help her. Handle whatever needed to be handled. He’d take care of everything. His friend would have wanted that.
Clara Sanderson’s best friend, Mary something-or-other, stood to the right of the casket and started to sing. “Oh, Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made…”
Needing both arms to take Leslie’s full weight, Kip pulled her up against him. It would all be over soon and she could get out of there. He’d carry her if he had to.
“…I see the stars, I hear the roaring thunder…”
He licked lips so dry they hurt. He couldn’t believe Cal was really gone. A loyal friend, attentive son, adoring older brother, he was one of the few men Kip truly respected. He’d been the reason Kip had made it to college; he’d cajoled Kip to go with him to the University of Michigan, to get out of the Columbus life of hard living, drinking too much, doing expensive drugs, drag racing—all things his father’s money had provided and his father’s neglect had allowed.
Cal had moved home to Columbus after graduation. Kip had stayed in Ann Arbor, got on with SI, and the rest was history.
“…When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation to take me home…”
Leslie’s head fell gently against his shoulder. Her body felt so unbelievably good. Familiar—though, other than a teasing punch on the shoulder, he couldn’t remember ever touching her before.
She felt…genuine. A safe harbor.
That seemed crazy when she couldn’t even stand on her own.
The minister said a few final words, and then it was time for Leslie and her mother to take one last walk by the casket, to leave their roses on the grave.
“Les?” He pulled away, glanced down at the face streaked with makeup and tears. She stared vacantly back at him—reminding him for one scary second of someone in a state of shock.
“It’s time,” he said softly.
She nodded. Kip supported her as she said her final goodbyes to her only sibling and then stumbled back to the car. She didn’t even seem to notice the people watching her, those judging her ability to cope, those offering love and support. She was lost someplace. On her own.
With a last glance back at the only real friend he’d ever had, Kip sent up a silent promise. He’d watch out for Leslie and Clara.
“WHO’S THAT OLD LADY, Nana?”
Ada King tightened her grip on the bony little shoulders of the five-year-old boy beside her. They stood at the back of the small crowd gathered at the Lakeview cemetery.
“That’s your daddy’s mama.”
“She doesn’t look mean.” Jonathan’s childish voice belied the wisdom in his tear-drenched eyes.
“She’s not mean, child.” Ada adjusted the little girl draped over her right shoulder. Kayla had fallen asleep shortly after they’d arrived. Ordinarily that would’ve been just fine, but at sixty-two Ada’s bones weren’t as able to withstand the two-year-old’s weight as they might have twenty-five years ago, when she’d been raising the children’s mother.
“But she won’t let me be up there with Daddy.”
Ada’s arm dropped from Jonathan’s shoulder. “Come, child,” she said, turning toward the sedan Calhoun Sanderson had bought for Abby right after she’d had Jonathan. Jonathan was too smart to be just five. And Ada was tired.
Too tired. The children needed someone with a body that didn’t ache every minute of every day, someone whose legs could still run and whose eyes could still see all the little things that tiny fingers reached for.
“She’s white.”
“Yes, child.”
“Like Daddy.”
“Yes, child.”
“Is she mad ’cause me and Kayla ain’t?”
Ada unlocked the car, transferred the sleeping girl to her car seat in the middle of the back. Kayla’s frizzy little braids were glued to the side of her head with sweat.
“Aren’t, child. Not ain’t.” She double-checked the safety latch across Kayla’s chest.
Jonathan stared at her as he climbed in to the front passenger seat. “You say ain’t.”
“I’m old.”
The skinny little black boy buckled his seat belt around the church slacks she’d laid out for him that morning and stared out the side window at his father’s grave.
Ada ached for a good long cry.
“THANK YOU ALL FOR COMING,” Attorney Jim Brackerfield stood at the door of the conference room in the downtown Columbus office that housed his firm. It was Friday morning. Leslie barely gave her brother’s partner a glance; she was more concerned with her mother’s comfort, with breathing calmly through the next few minutes. She could hardly believe only four days had passed since she’d been standing in her own office congratulating herself on a South Seas deal that now seemed far more distant than mere miles away—despite her daily calls to Nancy.
Kip pulled out chairs at the conference table for her and her mother. Smiling her thanks, Leslie smoothed the gray wool skirt beneath her and sat facing the north wall, the window of which looked out toward Ohio State University. Her alma mater.
“I would’ve been happy to come to the house,” Jim was saying to Clara.
“I know, Jim, and that means a lot. Thanks,” Clara said, her lips trembling. “But I needed to come here, to see his…the office without him in it….”
Leslie nodded, rubbed the crystals in her necklace, shades of blue and gray and black. She’d agreed with her mother’s decision to meet the attorney at his office.
While her mother and Jim, who knew each other well, talked about mutual acquaintances who’d been at the funeral the day before, Kip took the seat next to her. She hadn’t been surprised to hear that Cal had left something in his will for his closest friend.
His sports equipment, she’d bet.
She smiled at him a second time, glad he was there. She was doing much better today, now that the whole process of saying goodbye to Cal was behind them. Still, Kip’s presence was…a blessing.
Jim sat on the other side of the long table. He was older than her brother by at least ten years, his hair thinning and gray, but judging by his athletic frame, he’d shared her brother’s passion for sports.
“I…” He coughed, looked down at the papers in his hands, put on a pair of reading glasses. Took them off.
“Oh, hell.” He pushed the papers away. “Cal’s will is here. We can read it together or apart, whatever you prefer. But I know what it says, and there’s just no easy way to tell you—”
“None of us needs my brother’s money, Jim,” Leslie said, relying on her years of professional experience to put the other man at ease. “Even if he’s left it to…to historic car research, we’ll all support his choice.”
Clara patted Leslie’s thigh under the table, reaching for her daughter’s hand. “She’s right,” Clara added.
Kip nodded.
“He didn’t leave his assets—and they were considerable, by the way—to historic car research.”
Leslie waited, honestly unconcerned with anything but enduring this for her mother’s sake and getting out of there, as soon as she could. She’d used an antique gold clip to pull her hair back, but wished she’d let it hang free to curtain her face.
“He didn’t leave them to any of you, either.”
“Calhoun felt the weight of responsibility for all he’d been given,” Clara said softly. “He knew that neither Leslie nor I needed his money. It truly is fine, Jim. I’d just like to know who he chose to help….”
Let it be meaningful, Leslie thought. Please let his last grand gesture be full of heart and compassion.
Jim tapped the tips of his fingers together, glancing down again. His gaze, when it met each of theirs in turn, was grave.
“He left it to his children….”
Leslie’s skin chilled. Her fingers, sliding from her mother’s, were clammy.
“His…” Clara’s face was white, pasty-looking beneath makeup that no longer enhanced her skin, her lips thin and pinched.
Calhoun had children. Leslie’s heart raced, filled with fear, and then settled into an uneasy pace. God, please let them be well-loved. Safe. Protected.
She’d been all of those things.
No! Let them be…oh, she didn’t know what. Please, God, let it be okay. If something happened to them, if I could’ve done something…
“I should’ve known,” she muttered, “should never have stayed away so long.”
“Your mother was right here in town and she didn’t know….” Jim’s voice seemed to come from far off.
“It can’t be true,” Clara interrupted, sounding lost. “He would’ve told me. Cal was a loving son. Attentive. He was over for dinner every Sunday, took me to the theater, visited during the week. He would never have kept my grandchildren from me.”
Jim cleared his throat. “He—”
“He wasn’t even married!” Clara blurted, rubbing one hand up and down the skirt of her violet suit and pulling at the lapel of her jacket with the other. At seventy, Clara Sanderson was retired, but in her day, she'd been every bit as formidable in the business world as her daughter was now. Where Leslie’s forte was finance, Clara’s had been real estate.
Leslie took her mother’s hand under the table, as much to still her own jitters as to calm her mother’s.
“Be that as it may, your son had two children, Mrs. Sanderson,” Jim said, leaning forward as he spoke.
“And he left them everything,” Kip said, as though trying to sum up what they’d been told and get them out of there. Or at least, that was what Leslie hoped he was doing.
“Not quite,” Jim said, looking from Kip to Leslie. “He left the two of you something quite valuable, too.”
Leslie didn’t want anything of Cal’s. She just wanted to get outside, breathe, figure out what to do next.
“I can’t imagine what that would be,” Kip said, frowning.
Cal had kids someplace and presumably Jim knew where. She had to find them. Hell, she didn’t even know how old they—
“He left you the kids,” the attorney’s voice was like a loud crack in the silence. “To you, Kip, he left guardianship of his five-year-old son, Jonathan. And Leslie, he asked that you take two-year-old Kayla.”
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS ALL TOO incredible to believe. She was a mother. A mother! No, she wasn’t. She could be a guardian. If she chose to accept Calhoun’s final wishes.
Chose to accept. She couldn’t turn her back on a two-year-old child!
“I realize that you live in Phoenix, Ms. Sanderson, and expect you might need to get back soon. A temporary order can be issued immediately for you to take the child with you if that’s what you decide.”
“Hold on.” Kip stood, his slacks a lot more creased than they’d been when he sat down less than twenty minutes before. “Who are these children? Where are they? Where’s their mother? Why haven’t we heard about them until now? Who’s taking care of them? Where do they live?”
All questions she should have asked. Would have asked if she’d been able to think.
Jim nodded, glanced at Clara and then directed his answer to Kip, who was standing by the window, gazing back at him through narrowed eyes.
“A little over seven years ago, Cal met a woman while arguing a case in court. She was the bailiff. The way he explained it to me—just after Kayla was born and he set up a trust for the kids, and changed his will—he’d never met a woman like her. Her name was Abby and he said she made him feel complete in ways he’d never felt before. His actual words, if I remember them correctly—” he glanced at Clara and Leslie before returning his attention to Kip “—was that when he was with her, he felt accepted, forgiven for the parts of himself he wasn’t proud of. He didn’t tell me what he meant by that, what he’d done, or believed he’d done. But he said that with Abby, he felt worthy. Those were his exact words.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Clara said. “Cal was a wonderful human being, always giving, thinking of others. I told him all the time how much I appreciated him. I heard other people say similar things. He didn’t suffer from feelings of unworthiness….”
Her mother was breathing heavily, but otherwise she appeared to be taking the news a whole lot better than Leslie was.
Jim shrugged. “I’m only telling you what he told me.”
“So why wouldn’t he have told any of us about her?” Kip asked, coming back to his seat at the table.
“She was…different from him….”
